Lost Immunity by Daniel Kalla (free reads TXT) 📕

And the hospitals reported the first two.”

Fiona eyes him curiously, but Nathan waves away her concern.

“Doesn’t matter,” Peter snaps. “This was your launch. Which means it was your mess to clean. More specifically, your mess to prevent.”

“I didn’t make the vaccine.”

“No, you just cleared it.”

“That’s not exactly how I remember it.”

“Pretty sure your business card reads ‘responsible for new product development.’ ” Before Nathan can reply, Peter adds, “I expect you in my office tomorrow morning.” He hangs up without another word.

Fiona reaches out to Nathan, but her hand stops short of his arm. “Are you OK?”

Nathan laughs bitterly. “I have this mental image of Peter’s office right now. The torn cardigan strewn on the floor. And his owl-shaped mug lying in pieces beside it. As shattered as that Zen-like persona he’s been putting on since his stroke.”

Fiona eyes him with concern. “Peter is going to try to make you take the fall for this, isn’t he?”

“How does that old expression go? ‘Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan’?” He groans. “At this point, I might as well throw on a curly red wig and call myself ‘Annie.’ ”

CHAPTER 45

“What’s going on?” Amber asks as soon as Lisa answers the phone.

“How’s Olivia?” Lisa demands, spinning her chair away from the computer screen.

“She’s OK,” Amber says warily. “But why do you keep checking in? What do you know?”

Lisa hesitates. “We suspended the vaccine program.”

“Why?” Amber asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

Lisa tells her about the third vaccine reaction.

“Dad was right,” Amber protests.

The words cut, but Lisa doesn’t have the strength to argue. “I’m sorry, Amber. I didn’t know. Look, it’s still less than a one-in-a-thousand chance of—”

“How long?”

“For what?”

“How long after the injection could Olivia still react?”

“Days? I guess. Not more than a week.”

“A week, Liberty?”

“It’s all happening so quickly.”

Lisa hears Amber’s stilted breath in her ear. She can tell that her sister is on the verge of tears.

“We trusted you.”

“It’s going to be all right.”

“I got to go,” Amber snaps, and abruptly ends the call.

The guilt gnaws like a rotting tooth. Never before has Lisa doubted her path since leaving home and choosing science over the unfounded beliefs and paranoia that rule her father’s world. But the realization that she might have exposed her niece to grave danger through her own stubbornness rocks her belief system to the core.

She’s still obsessing about it as Tyra steps into her office.

“You all right?” she asks.

“Yeah, fine. Just thinking.”

“If you say so,” Tyra says with a click of her tongue. “I followed up on our conversation from this morning.”

“And?”

“The bad news is that all used syringes from the first vaccine clinic have already been collected and destroyed, including, obviously, the ones given to Mia and Darius.”

“And the good news?”

“The same isn’t true of the clinic where Mateo got vaccinated.”

“You found his syringe?”

“Not only his. All of them from that clinic. They’re individually labeled, so it didn’t take us long to find Mateo’s. Even better, there was still a drop of liquid left in the hub of his syringe.”

“You’ve sent it off to the state lab?”

Tyra nods. “They’ve promised to run a full screen. They know it’s a top priority.”

“Thank you.”

“Oh, I also have the number for Darius’s dad. That poor man. He’s in town making arrangements to have his son’s body flown home to Georgia.”

“Can you text it to me?”

“Will do,” Tyra says as she turns to leave.

As soon as Tyra forwards the number, Lisa calls it, and a man with a gravelly voice answers. “Hello.”

“Mr. Washington, I’m Dr. Dyer with Seattle Public Health. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

“Not at this moment, Dr. Dyer,” he says in a Southern accent. “I’m tied up here at the morgue trying to sort out how to get my boy home.”

“I’ll meet you there,” Lisa says without giving him a chance to refuse.

Lisa heads down to the garage and gets in her car. She turns on the ignition, and the voices on a radio talk show fill the interior. The host is interviewing an immunologist who specializes in vaccines, a soft-spoken man who’s doing his best to downplay fears over Neissovax. But the host keeps provoking him with leading questions and unfounded insinuations.

Lisa changes the station, but the topic remains the same. “This is all about the insatiable greed of these drug companies,” a phone-in caller bemoans. “I heard the company behind this untested vaccine is making billions off flooding Seattle with their deadly crap.”

“Maybe not billions, but no doubt they’re making a healthy profit,” the host replies.

They’re giving it to us for free! Lisa wants to yell at the radio.

“Not to mention the priceless advertising and free marketing opportunity they’re receiving,” the host continues. “At least, the opportunity they thought they were going to get before it all blew up in their faces.”

The next caller is even more indignant, and she specifically calls out Lisa, although not by name. “Where is the leadership in Seattle Public Health?” the woman cries. “How could they have let this happen to our kids?”

Lisa can’t help but keep listening, though she’s relieved when she pulls into the parking lot of the Seattle medical examiner’s office—to get out of the car and away from the radio’s vitriol.

Inside the office, Lisa finds Darius’s father, Isaac Washington, in the otherwise empty waiting room. Wearing a suit and tie, the man, who looks to be in his sixties, is stocky with square shoulders and a dignified presence. But his expression is crestfallen as he fills in a form, which Lisa presumes represents some kind of legal release of his son’s body.

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr. Washington,” Lisa says.

“Thank you,” he says with a small nod.

“Your son was studying engineering at UW, right?”

“Civil engineering,” Isaac says with obvious pride. “He was going to build bridges, tunnels, and roads back home. It’s all he wanted to do since he was little. He would’ve built some fine ones, too.”

“I’m sure he would have, Mr. Washington,” she says.